|
Please call 877-525-3257 |
Agenda
 |
|
|
|
|
| Click here to download the Conference Agenda. | ||||
| Thursday, February 21 | ||||
| Registration Open | 7:00am | |||
| Networking Breakfast | 7:00am – 9:00am | |||
| Welcome Address | 8:00am | |||
| Sessions | 8:15am – 5:00pm | |||
| Cocktail Reception | 6:00pm – 8:00pm | |||
| Friday, February 22 | ||||
| Networking Breakfast | 7:00am – 9:00am | |||
| Sessions | 8:00am – 12:00pm | |||
| General Sessions (additional sessions to be added) |
The Stock Characteristic Marathon Race Roger Ibbotson, Ph.D., Professor, Yale School of Management, Zebra Capital Management, Founder, Ibbotson Associates Which characteristics have the greatest impact on stock returns over the long run? Are they the risk-based (e.g. beta, volatility), Fama-French (size and value), liquidity (Amihud, trading volume, etc.), earnings (earnings/price ratios, gross earnings, etc.), or momentum-based (price trends and reversals) characteristics? In this session, we will reveal which ones have dominated over the past four decades, how they interact with each other, and how you can leverage them to create portfolios that better meet your clients’ needs. |
|||
| Dimensions of the U.S. Economic Outlook Kevin Kliesen, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Business Economist and Research Officer Despite considerable monetary and fiscal stimulus the past few years, the recovery from the Great Recession has been slower than usual and uneven compared with recent economic recoveries. Will the U.S. economy finally find its sea legs in 2013, or will the economy continue to grow at a sub-par pace? And what is the economy's normal pace of growth, anyway? Is there a new normal? |
||||
| A Dynamic Future for Active Investing Rodney Sullivan, CFA, Head of Publications, CFA Institute Active quantitative portfolio management is on the verge of important change. Managers must evolve their portfolio construction to reflect the reality of adaptive and turbulent markets. An opportunity exists for active quant managers to broaden their focus beyond pure systematic bottom-up quantitative inputs to emphasize top-down and other qualitative evidence. Such an approach offers the flexibility necessary to achieve investment success in today’s complex, dynamic global capital markets. |
||||
| Getting Globalization Right: Rules for Successful Global Investing Marvin Zonis, Professor Emeritus, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago Despite the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and ongoing new terrorist threats, globalization is alive and well and slowly rebounding to pre-crisis levels. Businesses that seek success through globalization need to make better "country bets." To determine where they should commit their businesses, they need to assess the prospects of countries for political stability and economic growth. Making better country bets offers the best prospects for prospering in the global economy. A set of 15 principles for "getting globalization right," including estimates of corruption, leadership succession, external threats and others is offered to help businesses make effective assessments of country prospects. |
||||
| Will My Risk Parity Strategy Outperform? | ||||
| Lisa Goldberg, Director of Research, Coleman Fung Risk Management Research Center, Adjunct Professor of Statistics at University of California, Berkeley | ||||
| We gauge the return-generating potential of four investment strategies: value weighted, 60/40 fixed mix, unlevered and levered risk parity. We have three main findings. First, even over periods lasting decades, the start and end dates of a backtest can have a material effect on results; second, transaction costs can reverse ranking, especially when leverage is employed; third, a statistically significant return premium does not guarantee outperformance over reasonable investment horizons. | ||||
| Featured Speaker | Reflections on Results From Researching Retirement John Ameriks, Ph.D., Vanguard, Head of Investment Counseling & Research Featured speaker John Ameriks will provide a summary and overview of key results from his research examining individual investor decisions over their lifetimes, focusing both on patterns and drivers of investor choices before retirement in the "accumulation phase" as well as the very different issues and patterns of behavior in choices people make---and the tradeoffs that people face---at the point of retirement and after. John's work gives sponsors a unique and important research-based perspective on retirement plan and product design going forward. | |||
| Keynote Speaker | Above All Else: The Power Of Passion Jamie Clarke, Extreme Adventurer, Charismatic Storyteller, and Motivational Speaker to the Fortune 500 Elite Jamie Clarke has summited Mt. Everest twice, climbed the Seven Summits, and ridden camels across The Empty Quarter of Arabia. He’ll share his journey of tenacity and triumph with humor and passion from the heart. Clarke will explain how to think differently - to view failure as a learning experience, to experience the art of grunt work, to conquer fear through focus - to live life with passion on their own terms. | |||
| Breakout Sessions | Economic Moats: A Path to Greater Returns with Less Risk | |||
| Warren Miller, CFA, Director of Quantitative Research, Morningstar Inc. | ||||
| What can a firm's competitive advantages tell us about its future returns? Warren Buffet often espouses the benefits of investing in firms with strong competitive advantages. Does this strategy pay off? In this session, we'll talk about Morningstar's research on economic moats and how to best utilize competitive analysis within a total return focused investment strategy. | ||||
| Technical Level: Moderate to High | ||||
| Audience: Portfolio Managers | ||||
| Topic: Investment Strategy Design | ||||
| In Search of Skill: Morningstar Investment Management's Approach To Selecting Managers | ||||
| Sonya Morris, Senior Investment Consultant, Morningstar Investment Management | ||||
| Back by popular demand, Sonya Morris will repeat a presentation from 2012 detailing Morningstar Investment Management's methodology for evaluating investment managers. As with last year's presentation, Sonya will describe how Morningstar confronts the challenge of identifying active managers who have the potential to outperform. She will also demonstrate how MIM's consultants use Morningstar Direct throughout the manager research process. | ||||
| Technical Level: Moderate | ||||
| Audience: Fund of Funds, Plan Sponsor, Advisor, Broker/Dealer, Platform Representativies | ||||
| Topic: Manager Research | ||||
| Alpha, Beta, and Now ... Gamma | ||||
| Paul Kaplan, Ph.D., CFA, Director of Research, Morningstar Canada | ||||
| Gamma attempts to explain outcomes beyond those of alpha and beta. The concept is favorable to managed accounts and encourages financial planning during retirement, based on five components: optimal asset allocation factoring in an individual's total wealth, a dynamic withdrawal strategy, using guaranteed income products, tax-efficient allocation decisions and a portfolio optimization that includes liability. This presentation will demonstrate how employing a "Gamma-optimized" portfolio can generate 29% more income for retirees. | ||||
| Technical Level: Low to Moderate | ||||
| Audience: General | ||||
| Topic: Financial Planning | ||||
| The Efficacy of Dynamic Asset Allocation Factors | ||||
| James Xiong, Ph.D., CFA, Senior Research Consultant, Morningstar Investment Management | ||||
| New dynamic asset allocation factors, ranging from macroeconomic, behavioral, to market-specific, have been scientifically tested for efficacy over the last 30-years. But are these newly discovered factors such as aggregate market liquidity and average stock correlation improving the effectiveness of dynamic asset allocation? This session will discuss how these new factors are not only useful as standalone indicators in dynamic asset allocation, but when they are combined, performance can be even better. | ||||
| Technical Level: Moderate | ||||
| Audience: General, Portfolio Managers, Fund of Funds | ||||
| Topic: Asset Allocation, Portfolio Construction | ||||
| Global Economic Outlook | ||||
| Francisco Torralba, Ph.D., Economist, Morningstar Investment Management | ||||
| Wealthy countries came out of the Great Recession with high debt and sluggish growth, at a time when emerging markets are still too immature to take the reins of the global economy. Is the global economy hitting another bout of turbulence in what was always expected to be a slow and bumpy recovery or will the current slowdown has a more lasting component? The answer is dependent on the actions of the policymakers. | ||||
| Technical Level: Low to Moderate | ||||
| Audience: General | ||||
| Topic: Economics | ||||
| Valuation-driven Active Asset Allocation: Widening the Opportunity Set | ||||
| Daniel Needham, Managing Director, Ibbotson Australia | ||||
| When investors assess the application of valuation-oriented asset allocation strategies in the late 90's, one of the common conclusions was that it was a very painful decision to sell U.S. equities and buy U.S. bonds, and that active asset allocation was not worthwhile. | ||||
| However, there were alternative equity markets and sectors that did not move up as sharply in price as U.S. large capitalization and technology, media, and telecom (TMT) stocks. While investors concerned with total portfolio risk (as opposed to relative risk), namely the risk of losing money, would have been defensive during this period there were other options outside of U.S. equities to generate decent medium term returns. | ||||
| In this presentation, we will consider a wider opportunity set and show that holding larger amounts of cash at times can provide investors with improved risk-adjusted returns. | ||||
| Technical Level: Moderate to High | ||||
| Audience: General | ||||
| Topic: Asset Allocation, Portfolio Construction | ||||
| The Myth of the Dumb Fund Investor | ||||
| John Rekenthaler, VP, Research, Morningstar, Inc. | ||||
| There is a popular myth that mutual fund investors are bad at selecting funds and if they were to hold index-only funds instead of the funds that they chose, they would be far better off. This myth is harmful because it addresses a problem that does not exist and distracts from a large and real problem that very much does. This presentation will reveal that the majority of mutual fund investors are skilled at security selection, but have a problem with asset allocation--a problem that cannot be solved by swapping an active fund for an index fund. | ||||
| Technical Level: Low to Moderate | ||||
| Audience: General, Plan Sponsor, Fund of Funds | ||||
| Topic: Investor Behavior | ||||
| Hitting the Target with Target Date Funds | ||||
| Jeremy Stempien, Director of Investments, Morningstar Investment Management | ||||
| As assets continue to pour into target date funds and the fiduciary pressure on plan sponsors intensifies, plan committees are becoming increasingly concerned about their target-date offerings. Those concerns range from their inability to properly benchmark the success of their funds to the lack of transparency over the funds' underlying risks. Join Jeremy Stempien as he looks at what the industry needs to do to better serve plan sponsors and participants, as well as what providers need to do to build more effective target-date products. | ||||
| Technical Level: Low to Moderate | ||||
| Audience: General, Plan Sponsor, Portfolio Managers, Fund of Funds | ||||
| Topic: Target Date Funds | ||||
| Combining Active and Passive Exposures for a Dynamic Asset Allocation Mandate | ||||
| Hal Ratner, Chief Investment Officer, Europe, Morningstar Investment Management | ||||
| Ideally, fund of funds mandates should combine comparatively pricey opportunistic managers operating with very wide mandates with low-cost passive product. This enables the fund of funds manager to manage beta while farming out "alpha generation" to niche managers. By allocating the risk budget among the vehicles best suited to manage active beta, structural beta, and alpha, fund of fund managers can effectively control the risk profiles of their portfolios. This presentation will show back-tested results of several example portfolios each with a different risk-budget objective; that will demonstrate that this approach can add value, particularly in periods of market stress. | ||||
| Technical Level: Low to Moderate | ||||
| Audience: General | ||||
| Topic: Financial Planning | ||||
| Liability-Relative Optimization: Begin With the End in Mind | ||||
| David Blanchett, Head of Retirement Research, Morningstar Investment Management | ||||
| People invest to fund a goal, therefore, the risk factors associated with the goal, or liability, should be considered when building a portfolio whose objective is to achieve that goal. The concept of liability driven investing has become increasingly popular in defined benefit plans, pensions, endowments, and foundations and is now increasingly used for target maturity and retirement income funds. In this presentation David Blanchett will touch on recent Morningstar research on liability driven investing and explore the asset allocation differences that result from a traditional asset-only optimization framework to asset allocations built from the liability-relative optimization framework. | ||||
| Technical Level: Moderate | ||||
| Audience: General | ||||
| Topic: Asset Allocation, Portfolio Construction, Retirement Plans, Retirement Income | ||||